It turns out that if a bottle of beer is put in the freezer for long enough, and then removed while it is still liquid and, lastly, given a sudden shock, the beer will instantly freeze solid. I saw this confirmed by the pop-science TV show Mythbusters in their episode 153, originally aired on 11/10/10. Based on trial-and-error experimentation their Build Team found that 3 hours of cooling time sufficed to create the delightful phenomenon. See the instant beer-freeze demonstrated by EasyBarTricks.com here. For detailed instructions on how to try this at home or in a classroom, plus a nerdy explanation (think PVNERT) by physics and math teacher Daryl Taylor, check out this website.
Of course I had to try this for myself. However, not being one who ever leaves well-enough alone, I tried light beer (Miller, bottled in clear glass) side by side with the recommended Corona – two of each. Could this be a factor (light versus regular brew)? After being careful to wait at least 3 hours for the quartet of brews to super-cool, I brought them out for a family party. Two of the beers crystallized when smacked on our kitchen cutting board, but the other two did not. Here’s a twist, though: None of the bottles were uncapped first, so how does that gibe with the PV-nerd’s explanation?
Alas, one of the light beers crystallized and the other did not – ditto for the Corona, so my results, albeit semi-successful, were indeterminate on the issue of light vs regular brews. The good news is that we salvaged two bottles of beer (the frozen ones become undrinkable).
Feel free to weigh in with your theories and experimental results from this beer trick. One thing I learned from my first try – a lot more beer would be good, along with a walk-in freezer (or the backyard in mid-winter).
#1 by bdhenders on August 5, 2011 - 2:45 pm
this looks like a fun trick. I’ll have to try it out. Did you have the beers in different places in the freezer? I hypothesize that the ones that didn’t work were in the front, where it might be a little warmer. Maybe I’ll test that out for you.
#2 by mark on August 5, 2011 - 3:24 pm
We have a bottom-drawer freezer that seems to provide fairly uniform temperatures by location. I randomized by position but with only 4 bottles that doesn’t really mean much. This could be a factor. Ideally one would monitor with separate thermocouples the precise temperature of each and every bottle. That would be my dream for a beer-only ‘fridge and freezer. : )
#3 by Eric Kvaalen on September 16, 2011 - 12:52 pm
First of all, I don’t believe that it froze solid. To freeze water you have to remove 80 calories per gram, which is like cooling it to -80° C, much colder than what your freezer can do. So it probably looks like it’s frozen solid, but actually contains liquid inside.
Secondly, the explanation by Daryl Taylor is not correct. If removing the cap lets some gas out (which is not obvious), this would cause a temperature drop in the gas above the beer, but this wouldn’t cause enough cooling to freeze all the beer. As you found, it’s not necessary to remove the lid. You just need to give it a shock or cause some bubbles and suddenly you have nucleated the crystals and they begin to grow (which heats the beer up, by the way).